V.S. Naipaul is a very good writer! Enjoyed this as I enjoy all Naipaul's books.

They say that really super rich guys (Donald Trump. Mitt Romney) often say the most stupid things because no-one wants to correct them. I think that winning the Nobel Prize may have had a similar effect on Sir VS Naipaul. His editors may now be less critical or maybe Naipaul has the power to be totally self-indulgent. It was def a struggle for me to complete this short novel. The only reason I think that I managed to finish it was my memory of David French`s excellent biography (the world is what it is) which assists in the reader`s understanding of Naipaul`s characters. Willie shares DNA with Naipaul and for me this was very interesting.

Eh... I thought the descriptions were good but the story line, I'm not sure. Only in the end 'It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling.', captured me

SUMMARY - The banality of brigandage is well-told, but it was a bit too grim, and a bit too disconnected to fully win me over. (Naipaul's novels read through, over and out.)
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Better than 'Half a Life', to which this is the sequel. I was never wholly convinced that this got fully into the guerrilla mindset, but it was at least possible to suspend belief. I found 1975's 'Guerrilas' more plausible, although in that case the grimness was the problem. The world can be a horrible place and fiction has a duty to explore it, but I prefer Naipaul first at his most elegiac, second in comic mode, and least as gritty gutter-sweeper of the human soul. Give me pop not grime, Mr DJ.

That said, I don't tend to like books that are all surface. There has to be some grit to the pearl. Magic Seeds does deliver on the sense of feeling lost in the moment. It excels in the banality of brigandage.

There is a realism in Naipaul sustained by a momentum of plot (switched between Berlin, India, Africa and London), and tensions in familial and clan relationships that work. Too much of any one place, and I would probably have liked this less (cf my review of 'A House for Mr Biswas', for instance). But the swings between place also fostered dislocation, as well as the story of disassociation it's trying to tell. I just felt the elastic stretched too far that it snapped. I wasn't always sure I really was reading about the same person throughout, and more fatally, nor was I sure I really cared that much anyway.

It was a distraction, and it had more variety and interest that 'Magic Seeds', but it was a ho-hum final one from V.S.

Sementes Mágicas é a continuação da demanda (iniciada em Uma Vida Pela Metade) de Willy Chandran por uma vida só sua e não dependente dos outros (como se isso fosse possível). Regressado de Moçambique, vai para a Alemanha de onde parte para a Índia, o seu país natal, para se juntar a um grupo de guerrilheiros que, teoricamente, defende as castas inferiores. Anos depois regressa a Londres para casa de Roger, um amigo também perdido na vida.
Algumas partes com os revolucionários aborrecem um pouco mas tudo o resto é muito bom.

I needed a book while traveling as I had finished the book I brought along and I recognized Naipul from the small choice of English books....this was my third book by Naipul and I liked it. I would not say it was terribly exciting but I found the writing through-provoking and motivating. Motivating to keep living out as many dreams as I can and to keep gratitude close by me.

This was the usual excellent writing -- or listening in this case. I think I prefer to read Naipaul as I think I lost something in the transition from ear to brain rather than eye to brain. The story was sort of disjointed for me and the part at the end where Roger is telling the story seems odd because Willie has been telling the story all along. I also find his writing a bit dark -- I always thought I was a bit of a pessimist, but not compared to Naipaul.

Meandering tale (part 2) of Willie Chandran.
This story lost my interest in some places but the caliber of writing and dialogue were always high quality.

A strange book: not just bleak, as the mature Naipaul almost invariably is, but sour, even misanthropic. It patches together the odyssey of a now middle-aged Indian man: study in 1960s London; an 18-year marriage in Mozambique as it drifts to civil war; a 6 month stay with a radical leftist sister in Berlin; 8 years in India as a rapidly disillusioned and eventually captured guerrilla insurgent (Anwar Pradesh?); exile to 1990s England. This feels disjointed—perhaps deliberately, for the man´s character itself seems a ragbag of disparate fragments, with no unifying force of its own. Fragmentation is a recurrent theme. Along with futility, stupidity and betrayal everywhere. (“a child’s vision of the world spinning in darkness, with everyone on it lost.” [p. 238]).

Written in 2002-2003, this calls for comparison with the mature Ian McEwan’s post-9-11 novel,
Saturday. McEwan offers a quite explicit parable of liberal decency: when attacked, we keep calm and carry on being decent, to the extent even of helping to mend our broken assailants. Naipaul, by contrast, has a secondary character voice the thought that “the nicer sides of our civilization, the compassion, the law, may have been used to overthrow that civilization” [p. 276]. This comes from a once-progressive English lawyer, whose life has progressed only to the disillusion of unsatisfactory marriage, toadying to a wealthy patron and dodgy corporate land deals. He is not talking about jihadists but railing against welfare claimants and assorted scum living in public housing: people, he suggests, who once constituted the old servant classes, but have now acquired a new sense of entitlement. This is of course a voice of Naipaul´s creation, not his own, but the offers no counterpoint other than the central character´s closing thought “It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That’s where the mischief starts.” [p. 294]. Everyone is tainted, no-one redeemed.

McEwan’s vision feels too cosily reassuring to be true; Naipaul’s too angrily nihilistic.

Sequel to 'Half a life' which wasn't even needed. Utterly boring and agonizing to read. 41 year old Willie is still confused, unmotivated to do anything in life. Story starts in Berlin and then he moves to India to support a revolution but all he does is petty stuff and lands up in jail. On amnesty grounds, he's back in UK and the story just wanders aimlessly. Sarojini is back in India to attend to her ailing father and after taking over the ashram unsuccessfully decides to go back to Germany. Complete waste of time......VS Naipaul, ur claims of writing are lofty but completely uninteresting to me.

The story is in continuation of V.S Naipual's first book titled Half a life. The book is interesting primarily because of the author's excellent prose writing skills. Even when the story goes dull, the author keeps the ball rolling with his detailed explanation of each character and the setting is described so beautifully that it seems almost like one is living through the words. The vital nerve of the story is how the protagonist goes from the process of just looking to seeing. How, through a series of intricately woven and subtle experinces and observations he comes out to understand the mysteries of life is astonishing.

When one removes out the character description and explanation of thougts and feelings, the basic story-line is uninteresting. At the very end of it, the flow, which is the prime source of interest to keep the book reading. seems to be dying away. There is no particular or a definite ending to the story.

In brief, read this book, if you want to get dazzled by the author's literary skills and to get a taste of what a true prose-writing actually consist of. But if one is looking for a light, engrossing and a firm-storyline kind of a read, this is not the book for you.

Not sure what to make of this novel. It meanders all over the place, starting and ending nowhere in particular. But it flows and reads beautifully and has lots of insights into the human condition; and it frequently made me pause and reflect. A most unusual book, and one I am glad I read. I can relate to the central thesis that if you drift in life and lets life pass you by, then you will probably end up nowhere special and dissatisfied. Very different to the concept of Karma, and perhaps Naipaul is here making an especially acute observation on India and Indian life in general.

A book which I will need to go back to in due course and reread, but more slowly and carefully, savouring the insights and prose for its own sake rather than as part of a somewhat disjointed story.